What I’m trying to do in Outlook

So, in my work e-mail, I get around 200 messages a day. I periodically get myself back down to inbox zero, but if I take a day or two off, I immediately get behind. I recently decided on a new mechanism for sorting my incoming mail. First off, would be to divert any mail not sent directly to me (where my name isn’t on the to or cc line) into a separate folder. This would be the stuff I would get to when I had time. Next would be to divert mail where I’m CC’d into a separate folder (this is the mail I’d read after reading my inbox), all mail with me on the TO line would be left to filter to my inbox. This way, I think I could make sure that I’m not losing the important messages in the noise of the stuff that I don’t need to read (but will when I have time).

Unfortunately, Outlook’s rules don’t let me do this. I can create a rule for messages where my name isn’t on the “To” line, and I can create a rule for messages where my name is on the CC line, but then messages where I’m in the CC line get put into two different folders because they aren’t mutually exclusive. Since the rules in Outlook are more or less fixed, there doesn’t seem to be a way to do what I want here.

3 Replies to “What I’m trying to do in Outlook”

Have you tried creating three rules to be processed in order:
1. Move all mail to the Lists folder
2. Move mail where you are on the To or CC line to the CC folder
3. Move mail directly to you to back to the Inbox.

I haven’t tried this, but given that the rules dialog says they are applied “in the order shown” I’m assuming this should work.